The Canadian rock power trio RUSH appeared on The Colbert Report last Wednesday, performing an extended version of their hit “Tom Sawyer” that reached into the beginning Thursday’s show. Before they took the stage, Alex, Geddy, and Neil accepted our challenge to perform “Tom Sawyer” as part of the video game Rock Band. Check it out!

We’ve played Rock Band before and found it pretty strange in how it rates your playing, especially on vocals (as Doc and his beautiful voice can attest). So now that we know it failed Rush at their own song, I don’t feel so bad anymore.

so if you take,

We got tickets to see Laurie Anderson! She’ll be in Dallas in October, performing a new piece called “Homeland,” which deals with issues of war and loss of freedom in a post-9/11 America. I’m so excited!! This will be the fifth (I think) time that I’ve seen her perform; I got to meet her after one of her shows and she signed my program. I was too nervous to even say anything to her! I discovered her music in 1987, when I was but a sophomore in high school. This was, of course, the era of 80s pop and hair metal bands, so being a Laurie Anderson fan was just another mark against me in the high school social strata, but I didn’t care.

I’m 16 weeks into this pregnancy and feeling LOADS better. I can eat almost like a normal person these days, although the amounts are still small. I still have a strong aversion to turkey and chicken, and other white meats. I can eat things like beef and sausage in small amounts, but my diet is largely vegetarian now, which I am completely happy with. I am so happy to like food again. I don’t think I’m really craving anything. I wonder if I will. I am eating a lot of fruit, especially berries, peaches, and apples. Fruit was one of the only things that was kind to my tummy during my weeks and weeks of nausea. I ate so much applesauce then, though, that I’m not sure I ever want to eat it again!

But, must not eat too much fruit. Must watch sugar intake. I don’t think I’m in danger of developing gestational diabetes, but one cannot be too careful.

I have a sonogram scheduled for this week. As far as I know, everything’s going well. I don’t think it’s obvious I’m pregnant yet, but it might appear that I’m getting a tad chubby in the belly. “Katy must really be hitting the snack machine at work a lot!” Not really. My work peeps have been made aware of my “delicate condition” now (I love saying that phrase, it’s hilarious), and one very sweet co-worker from down the hall regularly brings me stacks of baby books and magazines that she read during her pregnancy. VERY helpful!

I can still wear almost all of my regular clothes. Last week I bought a Bella Band, a thick and stretchy tube of fabric that you can wear over unbuttoned pants to keep them up, and covers the midriff if your shirt rides too high; it makes it look like you’re wearing layers. Since I’m nearly six feet tall, it is hard to find shirts that are long enough to meet the waistband of my pants anyway, so this Bella Band might prove useful even when I’m not pregnant.

I have no idea when I’ll need to start shopping for new clothes. Hopefully a lot of my regular clothes are cut in such a way that I can wear them through most of my pregnancy. We’ll see how that goes.

I had a couple of minor emotional breakdowns this weekend. It’s been awhile and the tears needed to flow, I guess. I cried a lot for “Bertram,” which is what we jokingly named our little miscarriage back in January. It still makes me sad sometimes. The rational part of me knows that it wasn’t really a baby yet; it was just a lump of cells that didn’t get very far. But sometimes I can’t help but cry for the lost potential. Doc hates seeing me sad. I think he might be better at putting all of that into perspective than I am. When my emotions get the better of me, I can’t even think straight, let alone put anything into perspective.

I’m feeling pretty useless a lot lately. I know I’m doing the difficult work of cooking a baby here, but it doesn’t feel like work. It doesn’t feel like I’m actually DOING anything. My body’s just on autopilot, doing it for me. I don’t have to think about the steps, or worry about whether I’m doing it correctly. So it doesn’t really feel like work, if that makes sense, and it’s hard for me to cut myself a break because it feels like laziness when I do slack off. I think I’m pretty good now at listening to my body, and following its cues, so I’m certainly never doing anything that would put myself or the baby in any sort of danger; but letting other people do things for me that I know damn well I can still do myself, feels like laziness and like I’m taking unfair advantage of the situation.

I’ll get over it, I know. There’s a lot of big changes I’m trying to adjust to, and I don’t always adjust perfectly right away. Like letting Doc carry the 40-pound box of kitty litter up the stairs: I know it was a good idea to let him do it, even though I feel like I can still easily carry it myself, but I was all emotional at the time and got mad. Because I’m feeling so useless. Getting mad was a dumb reaction, I know this now. He’s excellent at providing for and protecting me, and his instincts have really kicked in lately. I have resolved to let him do things for me more, even when I know damn well I can still do them myself. There is no sense in both of us feeling useless.

Now that my queasiness has backed off, I’m taking advantage of times when I feel good and have energy, to get little lists of minor things done. Like today I accomplished an impressive array of household chores. I wasn’t even really tired today, which is unusual. I’ve been going to bed early (usually before 11, which is early for me) and getting about 8 hours of sleep most nights. I do get up to pee at least once every night, and often I have insomnia after coming back to bed and it takes me an hour or two to get back to sleep. Annoying, but probably helping to prepare me for the interrupted sleep of a new parent.

And I cooked dinner tonight! A full-on dinner, for the first time in probably three months. I made oven-baked chicken breasts, coated in bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, and spices; green beans sauteed with garlic and yellow tomatoes, garlic bread, and a chocolate zucchini cake. Must get in vegetables any way I can! I couldn’t eat the chicken, of course, although I did take a few small bites in order to enjoy the crispy coating. Doc liked the chicken to the point where he said he’d eat the leftover piece that I didn’t eat tomorrow for lunch! That’s saying a lot, seeing as how there are very few leftovers he’ll eat.

I saw the world’s ugliest pickup truck today. I couldn’t help but notice it as its stereo was rattling my windows at a stoplight. It was black, with a peach hood and roof, and a stripe of purple flames all along both sides. I am pretty sure those color choices were on purpose.

We went to dinner last night with Kathryn and Brett for her birthday. Happy Birthday, Kat! Ziziki’s (yummy Mediterranean food) and then to Whole Foods for a delectable selection of desserts from their enormous pastry case. Unfortunately I started feeling icky and couldn’t eat my teeny key lime and lemon meringue tarts. They were just as good the second day :) The pastry guy gave us each a loaf of fresh French bread, on the house. It pays to shop at closing time.

It is almost 10 now and I am going to do a bit of yoga before bed. I would like to start going 2-3 times a week again at lunch time. Hopefully they are running classes throughout the summer; I need to check into it this week. I love paying $10 a month for my gym and getting all the yoga classes I want for that price!

So, in closing: Here is an article with some freaking awesome costumes for babies! Some are not so awesome (poop on head “costume,” for instance), but this lobster is just the cutest thing in the universe!

I realized tonight that I’ve only made three short posts in the past three weeks that AREN’T about my miscarriage. Part of me is tired of thinking about it, and I am sure that my readers, all two of you, are tired of reading about it too, so I’m going to try to move on to other topics now for the most part. I can’t promise there won’t be the occasional “woe is me” post, but I am trying not to let the woe engulf me and writing about normal things will be an exercise in getting my head out of that sadness.

So. Onward!

Last.fm
Doc turned me on to this cool site called Last.fm. It’s a free service (similar to Pandora) that keeps track of what music you listen to, streams music that it thinks you’ll like on your own personal “radio stations” (and does a darn good job, by the way, of choosing music that I like), connects you with people that have similar tastes, and introduces you to independent artists and music you may not have heard before.

Try it! It’s very easy to install and operate. It imports your iTunes listening history and then is able to custom-tailor “radio stations” for you.

The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You
I absolutely love Cracked.com’s lists. The people who write them are hilariously witty and razor sharp. Even if I don’t have any interest in the topic, although I usually do, I still read them for the quality of writing. Here are just a few choice quotes from a recent article about six adorably cute animals that can fucking kill you. This shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

If animals could talk, they would spend most of their time calling us dicks and telling us to get off their land. The traits we think of as “cute” are often simply tricks animals have developed to get tourists to throw them food.

There is no way you could look at a big, fat, happy, squishy, huggable hippo and not think, “If she could talk like a human, she would sound just like Jada Pinkett Smith and be oh so sassy.” You would totally name her Sassybaskets and she would be your tutu-wearing, ballet-dancing, strut-walking pal for life. Just you and Sassybaskets against the world! Look out, New York, here comes Sassybaskets!

The platypus is mother nature’s way of saying, “I made this thing out of spare parts I found on the workshop floor, and it can still fucking cripple you.”

It turns out swans are now and have always been vicious, mean little motherfuckers who will not hesitate to snap your fingers off one by one for daring to pollute its presence. And then going off to laugh with all their friends about what a huge loser you are.

Orange Almond Cake with Caramel Sauce
A few weeks ago I made a delicious cake. It is in no way low-calorie or low-fat, and it tastes utterly decadent. Here’s the recipe:

3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
1/3 cup orange marmalade
1/3 cup light sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-3/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
7 ounces almond paste, crumbled

Sauce:
1/4 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon rum extract
1/3 cup orange marmalade

Preheat oven to 350.

Lightly butter a 9″-round bundt cake pan; set aside.

With a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the apricot preserves, sour cream, and vanilla extract; beat for 1 minute more.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt; lightly fold into the batter along with the almond paste.

Spread batter evenly into the prepared pan . Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the center of the cake is firm when the pan is lightly tapped.

For sauce:
In a medium saucepan, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients and simmer over low heat for a few minutes more. Drizzle over cake slices.

Recent Activities
Last Friday night we went to an art show and dinner with Kathryn and Brett. Even though I didn’t particularly care for most of the art (a student show, watercolors), it was nice to get out and do something cultural with friends. I don’t know why we don’t do that more often. Recent events have got me thinking a lot about priorities and free-time activities, and I’ve realized that I miss actively making art and actively going out to look at other peoples’ art. I want to start doing that more often. We need to force ourselves to find the time…. maybe by just writing on the calendar what we are going to do, and then sticking to it. For someone who’s supposed to be an artist, I sure avoid art a lot of the time. I don’t understand myself sometimes.

As Oliver Sacks observes the mind through music, his belief in a science of empathy takes on new dimension. Sacks’s latest book is Musicophilia, an exploration of the musical mind. Sacks describes a series of ordinary people, with extraordinary neurological conditions, who were transformed by music.

read more | digg story

“The 10 Most Terrifyingly Inspirational ’80s Songs” is, without a doubt, one of the most hilarious things I’ve read in a long time!!

Robert Brockway describes Kenny Loggins’ “Highway To The Danger Zone:”

“Danger Zone” is comprised of entirely guitar riffs and vague references to machines and speed. He did not settle for a lesser concept. He put you on a highway: the fastest, straightest route possible directly to an entire zone that is nothing but danger. There was no “Parkway to the Naughty Territories,” or “Off Ramp to Risky Town,” or even “Scenic Route Through Fistfight County.”

And, of Foreigner’s “Jukebox Hero”…

If hearing “just one guitar” while standing outside a venue in the pouring rain can cause an innocent farm boy to mutate into a vulgar, screeching, musical demi-god, imagine hearing 17 guitars on top of a mountain in a thunderstorm! You could instantaneously transform altar boys all across the heartland into 80-foot tall rock ogres, shredding on nuclear guitars and ejaculating fiery magma into the horrified faces of America’s enemies. Serve your country, Foreigner. Give a little back for once.

You may be in imminent danger of Bon Jovi poisoning:

One minute he’s lamenting “Sometimes you tell the day/By the bottle that you drink/And times when you’re all alone all you do is think.” Then almost immediately extolling that he’s rocked all those aforementioned faces. Incidentally, if you have had your face rocked at any point by Bon Jovi, please seek prompt medical attention.

Read more here! It’s long but completely worth it, AND it includes links to music videos!

Saturday evening, Doc made me laugh so hard I literally fell out of my chair! I was doing some work on my computer and listening to Genesis’ Fly on the Windshield, and he waltzed into my office and began performing interpretive dance to the song. At the very end, when he mimicked the fly stuck on the windshield, wide-eyed and one wing flapping in the wind, I completely lost it and doubled over laughing, lost my balance, and slid to the floor in hysterics.

I love just laughing like that. He makes me laugh all the time. It’s great.

Speaking of things on the windshield, this morning while driving down Skillman at 45 miles per hour, a little gecko appeared on my windscreen, fully alive and clinging on for dear life. I don’t know if he’d been sleeping in the windshield-wiper area (which is full of leaves, as we park the car under a tree), or if he dropped from a passing tree and just happened to land on my windscreen, but in any case he looked terrified—to the extent that geckos can—and every few seconds, buffeted by the wind, he slid another inch or two up the windscreen. I was in heavy traffic and couldn’t immediately stop, but kept saying “Just hang on a few more seconds, little dude!” I pulled into the first parking lot I could find in hopes that he was still attached to the car, but alas, he was gone. Poor little guy. Hopefully he flew off and landed lightly on the pavement, and was able to scramble off the road before being smooshed. I’m telling myself that’s what happened, and that he’ll go on to lead a long and fruitful life, making many baby geckos to help control the mosquito population.

Doc’s recent post about the greatest albums ever recorded has got me thinking. He and I are in agreement on the greatest record ever made (Genesis’ Lamb Lies Down On Broadway…. just an amazing piece of art). We started wondering, what are some other “perfect” albums, ones without a bad song on them? Albums that you listen to straight through without skipping any of the songs.

Here’s a few I can think of. I’m sure I’ve missed some. I’d love to hear your picks, too.

The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Cowboy Junkies: The Trinity Session
The Cure: Disintegration
The Cure: Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me
David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Dead Can Dance: Spiritchaser
Depeche Mode: Black Celebration
Depeche Mode: Violator
Genesis: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
Laurie Anderson: Mister Heartbreak
Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine
Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral
Payne’s Grey: Pull It Down
Peter Gabriel: Security
Peter Gabriel: III (Melting Face)
Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd: The Wall
The Police: Synchronicity (yes, even “Mother,” LOL)
Sting: The Dream of the Blue Turtles
Tears for Fears: Songs from the Big Chair
They Might Be Giants: Flood
This Mortal Coil: Filigree and Shadow
U2: The Unforgettable Fire

I really struggled over whether to include Genesis’ A Trick of the Tail. It’s amazing except for one song that I just can’t listen to all that often. Just one measly little song… the rest of the album is completely amazing though.

Crazy cover songs I’m listening to tonight:

Van Morrison and Roger Waters singing “Comfortably Numb” live. Eh. I’m not wild about this cover; it sounded exactly like the original album version of “Comfortably Numb” (nice) but with Van Morrison’s voice (just weird).

Echoing Green covering Figures on a Beach’s “Accidentally 4th Street (Gloria).” Awful cover. I adore the original but this just sounded like something you’d hear at 11 p.m. in a gay dance club and then immediately forget. Quick story about Figures on a Beach: In college in the early 1990s, I was a vice president of the Campus Activities Board and the powers that be sent me to a national convention where bands and other acts performed in showcases, trying to get colleges to bring them to campus. On the trade show floor, where all the acts’ managers had booths, I was perusing a list of the talent that one company represented, and when I saw Figures on a Beach listed, I asked the manager about them, as I was rather a fan. He was quite shocked and said,”Really? You like them? They’re friends of mine and I kind of just put them on there for kicks!” Too bad they cost double the budget for our entire year.

Boy Least Likely To singing George Michael’s “Faith.” Freaking weird! I don’t like the original version, and I almost skipped right past this cover, but the hypnotic combination of the smooth-voiced male and female singers harmonizing throughout, and an instrumental chorus of slide whistles, a xylophone, and one of those little wooden clacker things that makes a zzzzZZZZPPP! noise, sucked me in.

“Mad World” by Gary Jules, originally Tears for Fears. AMAZING. I like it even better than the original. It’s just Mr. Jules and a muted piano. I think that this was on the Donnie Darko soundtrack (one of my favorite movies).

Jonathan Coulton covering “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot. Brilliant! If you weren’t actively listening to the raunchy lyrics, you’d probably let your kids listen to it, it sounds so bland and safe! It’s middle of the road soft rock with maybe a twinge of country, and it sounds like The Feel-Good Song Of The Year! I love this especially because the original is one of those things that Kathryn and I love to listen to REALLY LOUD in the car with the windows down, singing along and laughing hysterically. Have a listen. Or, if you want to hear the whole thing (and you do!), download the Coverville podcast where it’s played in its entirety.

Johnny Cash, “Hurt,” originally by Nine Inch Nails. Or, “Johnny Cash OWNS Trent Reznor,” as the kids say. The way the guitar builds in intensity at the end is stunning, and Johnny manages to put forth as much emotion as Trent Reznor, but without all the screaming.

I have just three words.

Stewart.
Fucking.
Copeland.

Forget Sting. Stewart was truly the star of the show. My god, can the man play drums!! He played like he was 20 years old! He played like he’d played those songs every day of his life since 1983! He is so fast, so precise, so incredibly talented. He had an enormous drumkit on stage as well as a secondary one behind him that included all manner of interesting hand percussion, xylophones, little hanging bells, and a full sized gong. He’d switch back and forth between the two sets during some songs, and it was fun to guess whether he’d make it to the other set in time. (He always did!). He also looked amazing, in white pants and a tight black and red shirt.

Jason Janik, Dallas Morning News

The concert was FREAKING AWESOME. It was such a cool experience to see one of my favorite bands in concert, a band that initially broke up before I was even old enough to go to concerts.

My only real complaint is that it wasn’t six hours longer. :) My voice was trashed last night and this morning from singing at the top of my lungs.

Andy Summers was also in top form, and although the guitar solos seemed a bit shorter and slightly less energetic than maybe I remember them being, he still kicked ass, especially considering he’s quite a bit older than the other two.

Sting can’t sing as high as he used to, which makes sense considering that he’s in his mid-50s. He did take some of the verses of some of the songs down an octave to accommodate, which was a little disappointing since I think a lot of the power of the original songs lies in that high yell.

He looked amazing, too, in tight black pants, knee high buckle boots (hello, 1980s!) and… well, what looked like an old white t-shirt full of holes and with cut off sleeves. Like maybe he’d rolled out of bed and forgotten to change his shirt. But shirt, schmirt, whatever; sometimes he doesn’t even wear one! I hear tell that in some cities (sadly, not Dallas), Stewart comes to the front of the stage and announces “And now, Sting is going to take off his clothes. And if he doesn’t, *I* will!”

Of course, most of what they played were the radio singles (almost the entirety of Every Breath You Take: The Singles), but they threw in a couple of gems that made me very happy.

Overall I was very pleased with how they performed most of the songs. Some were a bit of a disappointment, such as Walking in Your Footsteps: one of my favorite songs but it seemed like they just mangled the performance of it. It was too slow, and a little weak. This was also an example of a song where Sting didn’t go up to the right octave (like the verse that begins “Hey, mighty brontosaurus, don’t you have a lesson for us”), and it just seemed a little low-key and powerless.

They completely ROCKED on most of the songs, though, especially So Lonely, Synchronicity II, King of Pain, Driven to Tears, and Next To You.

I found it kind of amusing that they slowed down the tempo of a couple of the songs, most notably Truth Hits Everybody, which is supposed to be just lightning fast. Don’t know if it’s because one or more of them has difficulty keeping up with that pace, or if they just wanted to do something different. At any rate, it was a little strange.

Here is what they played, although not necessarily in order:

Message In A Bottle
Synchronicity II
Can’t Stand Losing You
Bed’s Too Big Without You
De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
When The World Is Running Down
Wrapped Around Your Finger
Walking on the Moon
Walking in Your Footsteps
Voices Inside My Head
Truth Hits Everybody
Invisible Sun
Roxanne
King of Pain
Every Little Thing She Does is Magic
Every Breath You Take
Driven To Tears
Don’t Stand So Close To Me
So Lonely
Next To You

Every concert you go to, there are always a handful of songs that you are just hoping and praying that the artist will perform, but they don’t. I really was hoping to hear I Burn For You, Tea in the Sahara, Secret Journey, Synchronicity I, and Murder by Numbers. And beyond that, it would have been great to hear the little-heard Omegaman, Hungry For You, No Time This Time, Man in a Suitcase, and Bombs Away.

I was really glad to see that it looked like the three of them were having fun onstage. At one point after they’d left the stage, Sting and Andy came back and Andy started in on the guitar part (wish I could remember which song it was!). Stewart came flying out onstage, leaped at his drumkit, and began playing JUST in time… and Andy grinned at him and Stewart grinned back and pointed one of his drumsticks at Andy like “JUST in time, buddy!” Almost like Andy had started the song before Stewart was ready just to see if he’d make it in time.

A couple of times Sting either forgot the lyrics or sang the wrong ones (such as in Don’t Stand So Close To Me), and what was really great was that he cracked up as the audience sang the CORRECT lyrics back at him.

And, of course, the E-yo’s were everywhere!! My friends and I used to call that “The Mating Call of The Police.” E-yo-oh… e-yo-oh…. e-yo, e-yo-yo-yo… and it’s variant “Rio… riay… riay-oh!” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, listed to Regatta de Blanc or the end of Walking On The Moon.

I do also have to mention that the opening band, Fictionplane, is fronted by none other than Sting Jr. Doc and I were calling them the Little Police. He’s blond, looks just like his dad, sings and plays bass for a 3-man band… hmm, sound familiar? I think that if my dad were that famous, and I had talent in the same area, I would do everything in my power to differentiate myself from him (different instrument, at the very least) to try to be taken seriously as a musician in my own right. I’m not saying that they were awful or anything, but it was quite forgettable mediocre rock.

All in all, this was the most fun I’ve had at a concert since… well, I can’t remember when. I’ve seen some amazing shows in the past few years (especially Aimee Mann, Peter Gabriel, and Elvis Costello), but none of them had the insane energy that this one did. I was bouncing up and down in my seat the entire time and singing as loud as I could.

Good times!

I’d forgotten how much I love Pink Floyd’s film “The Wall.” We saw it at the Inwood last night at midnight with Brittney and Chris. We weren’t the oldest people in the audience but we definitely fell in the high end of the range.

Near the beginning of the film, someone’s cell phone rang. The girl sitting in front of me turned to her boyfriend and asked, quite seriously, “Was that in the movie?”

Sigh.

Doc’s cluster headache cycle is just not going away. No screaming bad ones, but he has a headache almost constantly since about February. Saturday we went to three different health food stores looking for this capsaicin nasal spray which is said to help with migraines and anecdotally with some peoples’ clusters too. The first one was just a distribution center in an office park (closed), the second one was Roy’s Natural Market (closed on Saturdays… seriously, WTF?), and Whole Foods did not carry it. We may have to order it online.

Our Whole Foods trip wasn’t a complete wash though; we spent a long time staring at the fabulously gorgeous desserts in the dessert cases. They are too pretty to eat. I just want to look at them all day! I purchased a new bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Castile Soap. I love this stuff. The label, if you aren’t familiar with it (and if you’re not I suggest you read it!), will lead you to the conclusion that dear old Dr. Bronner was nearly all his pancakes short of a stack, but by God (pun intended) he can make some damn fine environmentally friendly non-sodium-lauryl-or-laureth-sulfate-containing liquid soap. It’s expensive but a little goes a long long way.